BY GREG LUCA | STAFF WRITER
EDCOUCH — Early in the first round of her third-place match at the district wrestling meet, Mission High senior Vaneliy Guerrero was trying to fight off a pull when she planted her right leg as hard as she could and felt a pop in her knee.
Guerrero let out a scream as trainers and coaches rushed to attend to her. Immediately, her mind went to powerlifting.
“I didn’t care what happened in district,” Guerrero said. “I knew I could’ve gone to state again, but it was powerlifting that had me worried.”
Guerrero said the trainers had to physically lift her from the match, with one under each arm, as she fought to try to continue. She wanted them to wrap her knee and let her back in the match, but they knew almost immediately that Guerrero had suffered a torn ACL. Her visit to Dr. Kip Owens early the next week revealed it to be even more significant: a torn ACL and meniscus, plus three strains of her LCL.
The knee won’t heal without surgery, and Guerrero said even with a brace, it sometimes gives out on her just as she’s walking normally throughout the day. Regardless, the procedure will have to wait until April.
Despite the daily pain and the risk of further injury, Guerrero hasn’t given up on powerlifting. She’ll be competing in the 198.5-pound weight class today during the Region 5 meet at Edcouch-Elsa High School.
“I could make it much, much worse, and I’m taking that risk,” Guerrero said. “I started this off, now I want to end it. I thought of them not letting me, but I never thought not to keep on going. I didn’t care what it was, I was still going to powerlift.”
Although the controlled environment of powerlifting makes it possible for Guerrero to compete, she has had to make substantial changes on account of her injury.
Two weeks passed between when she suffered the injury on Feb. 6 and when the doctors released her to return to working out, leaving her with just two more to prepare for the meet.
Powerlifting is comprised of the squat, dead lift and bench press, and each event gives Guerrero a different issue. On the dead lift, she feels a sharp pain above the knee, plus another ache on the side due to the meniscus tear. On the bench, she isn’t able to arch her back and push off with her feet as she normally would. But worst of all is the squat. She said she’s had to essentially “start from zero,” learning a different form that brings her legs closer together.
“This is the farthest I can bend my knee,” Guerrero said, pulling her right leg to about a 90 degree angle. “After that, I just feel pain, pain, pain, pain.”
The injury will present an especially stiff challenge at regionals, where coach Roy Pena said the judges are much more critical in making sure a lifter’s hip breaks the top of the knee on a squat.
She’s looked to Google for ways to tweak her form, but in the end she simply can’t work out as much as she would like. Guerrero and Pena started slow and tried to build up, but eventually had no choice but to dial things down.
“I’m losing strength every day,” Guerrero said.
Still, Pena is confident Guerrero can hit the state qualifying weight of a combined 795 pounds. The plan is for Guerrero to open with a 365 squat, a 170 bench and a 330 dead lift. If she hits all three, that would put her at 865.
Those marks represent huge jumps for Guerrero, who started powerlifting two years ago with a 185 squat, a 70 bench and a 190 dead lift.
With wrestling practice after school each day, she and fellow regional qualifiers Sally Ochoa and Estefany Gonzalez would arrive at Mission High at 6 a.m. to lift. During the summer and throughout football season, the girls would run through the same weightlifting and cardio program as the football team — “stronger than them, actually,” Guerrero said — including mat workouts and tire flips.
“If she was a guy, she’d be one of my starting defensive linemen,” Pena, Mission High’s defensive line coach, said.
Pain is essentially guaranteed at today’s meet, but Guerrero is confident she can push through. And, if necessary, that she’ll be able to do so again in two weeks at the state meet in Corpus Christi.
“I’m really proud of her. Everyone is,” Ochoa said. “Nobody thought she was going to continue, and she did. She’s just giving it her all and proving everyone wrong.”